Content aggregation: tools & guidelines

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GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR PROVIDERS

Keep WP6 coordinators informed about your ingestion plan: updates, changes, substitutions of the material/collections, adding of new collections/providers, any issue for uploading and publication.

Write Marzia Piccininno (marzia.piccininno@beniculturali.it) and Valentina Vassallo (v.vassallo@cyi.ac.cy).

Marzia Piccininno - Valentina Vassallo, Guidelines for the ingestion procedure (PDF, 49 kb)

USEFUL INFORMATION TO AGGREGATE CONTENT FOR EUROPEANA

Europeana only ingests and indexes the institution's metadata while the digital object remains at the original institution or aggregator.

An aggregator in Europeana context collects metadata from a group of content providers and transmits them to Europeana. Aggregators:

gather material from individual organisations,
standardise the file formats and metadata,
channel the latter into Europeana according to the Europeana guidelines and procedures and,
support the content providers with administration, operations and training.

Linked Heritage is an aggregator in the context of Europeana

Nasos Drosopoulos, Cultural Heritage Aggregation in Europe(PDF, 223 kb)

GUIDELINES ON THE USE OF THE LINKED HERITAGE AGGREGATOR (MINT)

The Linked Heritage aggregator (MINT) can be reached at the following url:

http://ipa.image.ntua.gr:8080/linkedheritage/

Browsing: please use Firefox or Chrome (Explorer is not supported).

Registration:

New users can create an account through the "Register" page

When registering an organization, please use a distinctive name including location instead of e.g. National Museum which is too generic

You can apply to an existing organization during registration or through user profile (for returning users).
If your organization is not registered in the system and you will be acting as administrator, you should register leaving the "Organization" field blank. This will grant you administrative rights to create your own organization and manage all its users and data.
If you are acting as coordinator for organizations in your country, we advise that you create an organization that will serve as the aggregator e.g. "Ministry of Culture". Administrators of respective organizations that will be monitored by the aggregator can subsequently set it as the 'parent' (alternatively, an aggregator can create all the sub-organizations himself and assign users/administrators to them).
When a user applies for an organization the administrator is notified through email in order to validate and assign appropriate role. More info on available user roles & rights can be found in the tool's home page.

Data import:

The tool can only handle xml representations of metadata. They can be uploaded in single file (containing one or more items) or multiple ones bundled in a ZIP archive (rar compression is not currently supported), or can be harvested from an OAI repository. Make sure that the files you are trying to import contain valid xml.
Characters like "

' '
" "
< <
> >
& &

Overview:

Use this page to browse all imports made for the organization/s you have access to. Follow the indicated steps (1.define item root, 2.define mappings, 3.transform your items) for each import dataset. Mappings can be edited and reused.
You can switch between import and item view using the options provided and you can also preview the mappings and final transformation by using the item view.
Transformation and OAI harvesting
Both processes can be time consuming and may also be queued for completion depending on the system's load. You can logout and check back later to see status updates.

Helpdesk:

Technical issues, questions, suggestions and feature requests should be directed to the Linked Heritage helpdesk. If you are not registered in the mailing list, please send the relevant registration form).

LIDO

26 September 2011. Regine Stein, Introduction to Lido (PDF, 3463 kb)
26 September 2011. Gordon McKenna, Using Lido (PDF, 213 k)
Linked Heritage - LIDO mapping worksheet (.doc)
Spectrum - LIDO mapping worksheet (.doc)
LIDO - ESE mapping worksheet (.doc )
For more information on LIDO visit: http://www.lido-schema.org

BASIC RULES FOR MAPPING

Before starting your mapping, plase read this document about the LIDO mandatory elements (PDF, 840)
Map first the mandatory elements; make sure that the respective fields in your source data are filled in. Individual data providers can decide on how light - or how rich - they want their contributed metadata records to be.
Populate indexing elements if possible, and only in second step display elements (people tend apparently to fill in only display elements because it seems easier but is usually not appropriate).
Analyze your source data for event-mediated information: look for implicit event types in field names and for qualifier elements.
Think of your data outside of your own context - add implicit information: e.g. the repository name, if you map the inventory number.

MAKING THE LINK WITH EUROPEANA

Europeana element	Definition and notes	Data requirements
isShownBy	An unambiguous URL reference to the digital object on the content provider's web site in the best available resolution/quality. (i.e. a link to the content as a text, image, sound, or video file not to the webpage with it on). Data here will allow the full functionality of Europeana and the automatic generation of a thumbnail by them. If this cannot be given then you must provide data for isShownAt.	Must be valid URI (e.g. URL)
isShownAt	An unambiguous URL reference to the digital object on the content provider's website in its full information context. If this cannot be given then you must provide data for isShownBy.	Must be valid URI (e.g. URL)
object	For image thumbnails, if you can give a URL to a thumbnail on your website then give that URL here. However these thumbnails smaller than 110 pixels high then it will be scaled up to that size by Europeana. If you do not have a thumbnail then you may give the same data as in isShownby element.	Must be valid URL
type	The Europeana material type of the resource.	Must be: TEXT or IMAGE or SOUND or VIDEO
provider	Name of the organisation that is delivering content to Europeana. If the provider is not an aggregator then use this element. If the provider is an aggregator then use this element for the name of the aggregator. For the name of the provider to the aggregator use the element source.

Partners SHOULD supply a link to a thumbnail preview which is preferably the same width or slightly larger than the requirements of Europeana (currently 200 pixel wide). Partners SHOULD NOT supply a link to a very large image (i.e. much wider than 200 pixels). If the thumbnail is larger than the requirements, Europeana WILL REDUCE it. If smaller, Europeana WILL NOT RESIZE it (It is recommended that content providers look into possibilities to supply bigger size source images for image caching if possible).
Partners SHOULD NOT supply a link to a ‘dummy' thumbnail that indicates that there is no image or that no image can be displayed for IPR reasons. If this in not easily possible, partners SHOULD supply the URL of the ‘dummy' thumbnail to Gordon.
Europeana WILL NOT ACCEPT records without showing a digital object (image, etc.) on the partner's site. However, these records CAN BE UPLOADED on the Linked Heritage tool.